Radiology Partners (RP), one of the largest physician-led and physician-owned radiology practices in the U.S., announces that it has formed a strategic alliance with Aidoc, a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for medical imaging, to offer AI capabilities to its hospitals and health systems and to accelerate the adoption of AI as the standard of care in radiology.
“AI has the potential to unlock enormous value for the entire healthcare ecosystem, and I believe our partnership with Aidoc will turn out to be the tipping point for AI in radiology, a medical specialty that has systemic influence on the overall delivery of patient care,” says Rich Whitney, CEO and chairman for RP.
“RP radiologists interpret nearly one in 10 of all imaging studies conducted in the U.S., and we are fast approaching a world in which AI tools serve as critical skill multipliers for physicians, allowing step-function improvements in patient care and clinical outcomes, and reductions in overall healthcare costs,” Whitney adds.
Aidoc’s solutions support and enhance the impact of radiologist diagnostic power helping them expedite patient treatment and improve quality of care by flagging acute anomalies in real time. The company helps radiologists improve efficiencies that lead to a reduction of inpatient length-of-stay and time in the emergency department, which results in better care and lower costs for the patient, payer, and health system. Aidoc is already integrated into the clinical workflow at hundreds of sites around the world, notifying radiologists on millions of cases and improving turnaround time by over 30%.
“Health systems are coming to realize that they need an enterprise approach to AI and that it will become impossible to adopt fragmented, niche AI solutions for every subspecialty,” says Elad Walach, CEO and Co-founder of Aidoc.
“Over the past four years, we’ve developed the most comprehensive acute AI suite on the market,” Walach continues. “We doubled the number of products last year and will double the portfolio again this year. A partnership between the clear leader in imaging AI and the dominant player in radiology physician services will accelerate adoption and establish an exciting new standard of care in the radiology field.”
As AI increasingly becomes integrated into the radiologists’ practice, ensuring that the technology accounts for a diverse patient population is critical to providing appropriate care. Aidoc developers were mindful of potential bias risk and trained the platform using the most complex, heterogenous, and geographically diverse data available as a means to combat such limitations, company officials say.
The partnership with RP offers the opportunity to develop and continually refine tools across a heterogeneous portfolio of care sites across 30 states, the largest collection of real-world radiology data available in the U.S.
“The adoption of AI promises to deliver better clinical outcomes and save lives. And while we have deep experience with AI and integrated machine learning, we knew we needed an expert partner to propel our capabilities into the future,” said Nina Kottler, MD, RP’s associate chief medical officer for clinical artificial intelligence. “With a priority on enhancing patient care while improving the physician experience, Aidoc’s ability to demonstrate value in our complex and highly diverse population provided the confidence we needed to forge this alliance. I am confident our collaboration will further the transformation of radiology.”
In addition to the broad implementation, as partners, RP and Aidoc will develop new clinical programs and AI-based radiology services to broaden the impact of AI in clinical care. Other areas of collaboration will include real-world data, post-market surveillance, marketing, distribution and physician education, training, and feedback.
